[Haskell-beginners] Re: let indenting problems

[Heinrich Apfelmus]

7stud wrote:
> Heinrich Apfelmus <apfelmus <at> quantentunnel.de> writes:
>> How about
>>
>>    import Data.Ord (comparing)
>>
>>    mySort = sortBy (comparing length)
>>
> 
> I just finished chap. 3 of Real World Haskell, which doesn't 
> even imports.  It took me hours to figure out how to 
> access sortBy.  The book hasn't introduced "comparing", yet.

It's a handy little function for exactly this sort of thing. It's defined as

   comparing p x y = compare (p x) (p y)

See also

   http://haskell.org/hoogle/?q=comparing


>> or at least
>>
>>    mySort = sortBy myCompare
>>        where
>>        myCompare x y = compare (length x) (length y)
>>
> 
> Very nice.  The book mentioned the compare function in 
> chap. 2.  
> 
> I have a question about that code: how come you
> don't have to specify a parameter for mySort, for example:
> 
> mySort xs = ...
> 
> And doesn't sortBy require two arguments?
> 
> sortBy :: (a -> a -> Ordering) -> [a] -> [a]
>                  (1)              (2)
> 
> How come you can write it with only one argument?

You can supply arguments one at a time, this is called "currying". In
other words, the expression  sortBy myCompare  is created by supplying
one argument to  sortBy  and thus has one argument remaining. More
specifically, it has the type

  sortBy myCompare :: [[a]] -> [[a]]

Furthermore, we can simply set

  mySort = sortBy myCompare

and the left hand side will be a function with one argument just like
the right hand side is.


> Finally, I'm wondering if anyone can explain why my
> let examples failed?

Your use of  let  in conjunction with  where  was not syntactically
correct. While both are used for declaring new things,  let  is an
expression while  where  is a declaration, these two don't mix.

In particular,  let  must always have the form

  let
     x = ...
     y = ...
     ...
  in expr

while  where  is used like this

  foo x y
     | ... = expr1
     | ... = expr2
     where
     a = ...
     b = ...
     ...

Construction like

   let ... in where ...
   let ... in | ...

do not exist, there is no expression after the  in  . I suggest
consulting a syntax reference for Haskell or using  where  only for the
time being.


Regards,
apfelmus

--
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